Resignation of the Kucharzewski government

On 11 February 1918 the president of ministers, Jan Kucharzewski, and his cabinet submitted their resignation to the Regency Council. It was a protest against the peace treaty that the Central Powers had signed two days earlier at Brest-Litovsk with the Ukrainian People’s Republic. In it Germany and Austria-Hungary promised Ukraine the Chełm Land and part of Podlasie, territories which the Poles regarded as an inseparable part of the future state. The first government of the Kingdom of Poland had been in office for barely two months.

Kucharzewski had taken office with Berlin’s consent as a declared opponent of Russia, convinced that Poland could rebuild its statehood at the side of the Central Powers. He regarded as his most important tasks the building of a Polish army and the admission of the Polish government to the peace negotiations that had begun at Brest in December 1917. In neither did he achieve his aim. The occupying powers took refuge behind the patent of 12 September 1917, under which the Polish authorities could represent the Kingdom abroad and conclude international agreements only after the end of the occupation. Neither the regents nor the government were therefore invited to Brest, although the fate of Polish lands was also being negotiated there.

The resignation came just as the government was gaining real powers. Under a decree of the Regency Council of 3 January 1918, on 2 February the Council of Ministers took over the powers of the Transitional Commission and of the Executive Department of the former Provisional Council of State, and the existing departments were turned into ministries. Kucharzewski concluded, however, that after the Treaty of Brest his policy of co-operation with the occupiers had lost its meaning. For Polish public opinion the treaty was a new partition, and indignation was growing in the Kingdom and in Galicia. A government that remained in office would have lent its authority to a decision taken without the Poles and against them.

The resignation did not immediately end the cabinet’s work. The Regency Council itself considered stepping down, but in the end confined itself to a message of 13 February in which it protested against the “new partition” and announced that henceforth it would exercise power by the will of the nation. The regents accepted the government’s resignation only on 27 February, which the Monitor Polski announced a day later. Some studies state that Kucharzewski ceased to hold office as early as 21 February. On that same 27 February the Regency Council appointed a provisional government (PL) headed by the outgoing Minister of Religious Denominations and Public Education, Antoni Ponikowski. A new full cabinet, headed by Jan Kanty Steczkowski, was formed only in April.

Kucharzewski briefly returned to politics. In October 1918 he was again president of ministers for a week and signed the Regency Council’s message of 7 October announcing the rebuilding of an independent Poland. His February resignation, however, was the first such clear signal that the activists who had staked everything on co-operation with Berlin and Vienna were losing faith in their promises.